


Where You've Gone, I Can't Follow

by Sunny (AGardenOfSunflowers)



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: F/M, Gen, my small but meaningful effort to keep my mental health from taking a long walk off a short pier, strap in we're about to fix the absolute bullshit that was that finale
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 06:35:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28541157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AGardenOfSunflowers/pseuds/Sunny
Summary: Nick refuses to believe that Sabrina is dead. He doesn't know what else to believe, but he can't let himself think that she's really gone.
Relationships: Nicholas Scratch & Sabrina Spellman, Nicholas Scratch/Sabrina Spellman
Comments: 2
Kudos: 39





	Where You've Gone, I Can't Follow

After the funeral had concluded, and Zelda had finished speaking, it seemed as if everyone was hesitant to move from where they stood. It was as if by moving their feet, leaving the small graveyard, continuing on with their lives in this most miniscule of ways, they were all accepting what surely must have been some cruel trick: that Sabrina Spellman was truly dead, and that she wasn’t coming back. And so it took a little time for anyone to make the conscious decision to move from where they stood. It was slow going at first; those in the back who had had an attachment to the teenage girl, but no sort of connection to her through heart or soul, left first. Witches from the academy who had helped in the efforts to save the word, but who hadn’t been friends with Sabrina, exactly. But still, they wept too, felt the absence hanging heavily in the air. They moved so slowly and so quietly from the small space that Nick hadn’t noticed them leave at all, at first. But as time passed, more and more people left. Finally, it was hard _not_ to notice the glaring absence of people in the enclosed graveyard in the yard of the Spellman Sisters’ Mortuary.

It was perhaps hardest, unexpectedly so, when Sabrina’s mortal friends left. Theo and Robin first, Robin’s arm wrapped firmly around the smaller boy’s shoulders as tiny sobs squeezed their way past his lips. He trembled visibly as they turned and began to take their leave. Robin’s eyes were as red as Theo’s, his throat working as he tried to keep himself together, at least for now. He led Theo away delicately, as if moving too quickly might set off another crying fit. Who’s crying fit, exactly, was unclear.

A little more time passed before Roz and Harvey took their leave. The two were less reserved in their mourning than Theo and Robin. Rosalind’s sobs, while muffled behind her hand most of the time they’d all been gathered, and occasionally by Harvey’s shirtfront, hadn’t slowed or stopped. She, too, had red eyes, and dabbed constantly at her nose with a tissue that had been crumpled so thoroughly in her fist that it was a wonder the thing was even still usable. By contrast, Harvey made no sound; instead his eyes were fixed wide in disbelief, or shock, or quite reasonably both. He stared unblinkingly at the two fresh headstones set into the dirt, his bottom lip quivering. Eventually Rosalind’s crying had calmed to a quiet, laboured breathing.

By the time the two had come unfrozen, thawed enough to make their departure, the sky had darkened. It seemed as if they made the decision to move in tandem, so attuned to each other that they moved as one. Despite making the decision herself, the movement of their bodies set Roz to weeping openly once more, and Harvey wrapped his arms firmly around her waist to guide her as they walked. Nick could hear the sound of her crying become fainter and fainter as they went, until eventually he could hear nothing but silence once again.

The creeping silence finally settled over him, so heavy that it made breathing difficult. It wasn’t until then that he became aware of his own laboured breathing at all, the pounding of his heart in his chest hammering so violently that it pained him and made him think that eventually it might pound its way out altogether. Surely the cracking of his ribs and the ejection of his own heart from his body would hurt less than what he had just had to endure. Surely.

Nick blinked his eyes, and looked around himself for the first time in what felt like days. The only other people still here with him within the small graveyard were Sabrina’s aunts, Hilda and Zelda. Nick couldn’t quite stare at them for too long either; they were still caught up in their own grief, still just as afloat as he was. Hilda’s sniffles and hiccups were much louder than Zelda’s as she rubbed circles into her sister’s back, but Zelda was still crying openly. It was so rare that Nick saw Zelda cry at all that the prolonged action made him all the more despaired. Surely if Zelda was crying so freely, then this wasn’t some sick cosmic joke after all.

No. He couldn’t think about it. He wouldn’t. And so he retreated back into the safety of his own empty mind, unblinking as he stared back at the headstones.  
  


Eventually the Aunties left, too, returned to the mortuary. If they made any attempt to speak to him, he didn’t hear them.  
  


Not over the sound of the waves crashing in his ears, and his heart shattering into a million tiny pieces in his chest, over and over again.


End file.
